Fragility and protective shields At times a meeting becomes a reunion. I knew Fermin for his songs and because their words are clear and talk of him, because they are his infantry, his embassy Ð they precede him. Because they are the chorus of his thoughts and contain the huge fragility of protective shields. And Fermin really hones words like he would knives and agitates with his song-commitments, using the chorus lines as trenches, the musical manifesto of his ideas. The international of words and ideas. Internationalism against globalisation. Beautiful sun, beautiful song. Somewhere this Dub Manifest goes `the young people who shout donÕt feel the cold ´, and itÕs true. ThatÕs why he goes on shouting, dancing and looking to the east, taking his songs to the bars and the boroughs, to the streets and the squares. Telling us all- too- close-to-us stories of far-off lands, of armed lands, inhabited by Latin American violence, structural, inhabited by hereditary violence, where the devil works his lands and each morning kisses the children on the forehead, where hate flourishes without effort, watered with the daily weeping of the mothers. ThatÕs why Fermin, who knows about it, carries on looking for life, the bad life, the emergency exits, carries on talking to us of pain with that joie dÕesprit of someone who is hoping and expecting it to see it disappear some day. Meaningful, tattooed and transhumant music, walking music, precise collections of sounds and passages, music from many groups and frontiers. He is accompanied by Nacho Murgui, Zebda, Wagner, Muñeko, txalaparta-players and rappers, and many other friends and guests who have taken part in the fiesta of this disc with their winds, with their voices, with their convictions. We already know the old favourites: brigadista band, generous and capable of warming the inside of a freezer; powerful band, showering gifts and melodies on us from the covers of their instruments. At times a meeting becomes a reunion and this is one of those. 418 words for so many dances, so much crack and so much struggle. >From Kortatu y Negu Gorriak, then with Dut and others, accompanied, as always, by bars and streets, by those times of wild living of our adolescence. ThatÕs what this FM 99.00 Dub Manifest is. A brilliant festive trip, a youth who shouts so as not to feel the cold. Songs of love, songs of hate, armed with words which continue to be his infantry, his embassy, which continue to talk, as so often before, of Fermin Muguruza, his doubts and his beliefs, of his tattoos of memory, of the fragility of his protective shield.